Decided to change things up today and drop the reps and up the weight to shock the body. Worked up with doubles to a double at 455 with belt and knee wraps. I started wrapping my knees at 405 as my right has been a little bother some lately. The weight felt good on my shoulders, I was slightly worried as I haven’t been up in the 400’s for what seems like forever. I think 500 is just around the corner.
I finished up the day with a few sets of GHR’s and abs, both using bands. The bands are assistance for GHR’s and resistance for abs.
Another session of stretching was in order after all this. It’s starting to feel better and I’m starting to get a little more flexable which is nice.
Alright so there’s no profit involved but I suppose they are fun. I worked up to two sets of five reps at 180kg(396lbs), I believe this is the most I’ve ever done for fives. My hands are really feeling todays workout, they seem to have taken quite a beating today.
Hit up my mid back next with some bent over rows, doing three sets of six reps at 185lbs. I seem to recall having done more than this but it felt like enough for today, some of that might have had to do with my already tired hands/grip.
Finally I finished the workout off with some reverse grip, narrow grip lat pulldowns. I really concentrated on the reps, making sure to keep them slow and controlled all the way through. I worked up to two sets of six reps at 135lbs. After the last rep my hands were stinging pretty bad. I need to find a way to toughen up the skin on my hands.
One of the other powerlifters at our gym made up a nice set of chains which we had the pleasure of using today. Each length of chain weights 40lbs and at my chest about 25% of it was on the ground. So to do the math it would add 60-80lbs through the range. I could be slightly off on how much was on the ground at the bottom so it might have been 50lbs at the bottom but not much less than that. I worked up to three sets of three reps at 225lbs+chains, so 275-305 through the range. This proved rather challenging but definately a welcome change.
To burn the triceps more we moved onto close grip bench plus chains. Doing three sets of four reps at 185lbs+chains, 235-265lbs. While my triceps didn’t hurt like they usually do when doing really isolating movements like pulldowns or dips they definately felt well worked over.
Finally I finished up with upright rows doing three sets of ten reps at 120lbs. I find these make my traps, medial delts and rear delts just burn like nothing else.
I decided to follow up todays workout with a good 10-15 minutes of stretching, I worked through my lower body and upper body trying to stretch out all major muscle groups. I think this tired me out just as much as my workout did. I dont do nearly enough stretching and I think this will probably have to become part of my normal routine.
I’ve been out on the golf course far too much this week and I think my lower back agrees with that assessment. My lower back has been on the fritz for the last couple days but I didn’t want that to take me out of the game all together so I just tried to listen to my body and stop when it said so. I ended up working up to a triple at 365 on the squats but my back said that was enough so I left it there.
Moved onto some weighted ab work for three sets, I changed up and did standing pully curls(if that makes sense) as I felt this would leave my back alone while I hit my abs. It worked out that I was indeed correct and had no back pain while doing these. Finished up the day with two sets of GHR’s to six reps at which time my oft-neglected hamstrings told me to get the hell off the machine. So I limped out of the gym for the day.
First time in about a month I’ve done a back workout so I decided to keep it light, in retrospect I didn’t exactly keep it light. I worked up to 170kg(374lbs) by five reps for two sets on conventional deadlifts. I might have done well to keep this to 150 or 160 for the first week but hindsight is 20/20.
The only other thing I did was bent over rows which I worked up to one set of 185lbs for six reps. I decided that was a good time to stop as my lower back was warning me as it was.
Couple nice rest/recoup days ahead of me now.